Lions Gate Entertainment is butting heads with Ameritrade and Havas Worldwide over the scope of discovery in Lions Gate's copyright and trademark infringement claim involving Ameritrade/Havas use of the media company's "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner" trademark (see 1607120017). In a supplemental memorandum (in Pacer), Ameritrade/Havas accused Lions Gate of "a cat-and-mouse game, trying to narrowly and self-servingly limit" discovery request responses. It said Lions Gate could have reviewed roughly 9,900 emails or suggested a compromise, but instead delayed to the point that the motion to compel plaintiffs' production of documents ate up three meet-and-confer calls and more than 26 hours of Lions Gate attorney time. Ameritrade/Havas called false the Lions Gate allegations that the defendants want 29 years' worth of communications, when they want documents going back only five years related to the Dirty Dancing trademark, except when Lions Gate licensed the "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner" line for advertising. Lions Gates' supplemental memorandum (in Pacer) said its assessment of the burden from discovery sought by Ameritrade/Havas "is even greater than it originally understood," saying it hired a third party to collect and search for potentially responsive documents. The company said it agreed to produce documents in the discovery order the defendants seek.

Comcast's NBCUniversal is increasing its investment in BuzzFeed by another $200 million, NBCU said in a news release Monday. That follows a $200 million initial investment it made last year (see 1508180051). The money will extend the advertising sales relationship between the two, while BuzzFeed also will work with NBCU on production and social distribution, the programmer said. The investment also will let BuzzFeed expand its Tasty food media network and create cross-platform ad products and expand BuzzFeed News.

Charter Communications hasn't shown substantial grounds for difference of opinion in a controlling issue of law nor that an appeal would advance the ultimate termination of Entertainment Studios Networks' (ESN) complaint, in appealing a denied motion to dismiss. the plaintiff said. In an opposition filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, ESN said Charter's argument (see 1611140044) that the First Amendment bars the claim the cable company was racially discriminatory in not carrying ESN content isn't appropriate for interlocutory appeal because there isn't a full factual record. "Supreme Court case law confirms that Charter does not enjoy blanket immunity under the First Amendment," ESN said. "Charter wants to delay this case by having a 'do over' in the Ninth Circuit." The operator didn't comment Monday.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau should focus on "hard down outages" if the FCC extends Part 4 outage reporting requirements to broadband internet access service (BIAS) providers, NCTA officials told bureau staff, according to an ex parte filing Friday in docket 15-80. Limiting broadband outage reporting to hard down outages -- complete losses of broadband or a lack of broadband dial tone -- "would be clear and straightforward" to put in place, it said. Monitoring and reporting BIAS network performance using such metrics as latency, throughput and packet loss "would be virtually impossible to implement," and costly, the group said. Performance degradation reporting also would mean a filing deluge, but the quality of service information "would only seldom, if ever, describe outages that actually affect consumers' ability to contact emergency personnel," it said. At the meeting were NCTA staffers including Associate General Counsel Steven Morris and bureau personnel including Chief David Simpson.

The FCC set-top box draft order would allow companies like Google “unfettered access" to pay-TV information and could lead to consequences for consumer privacy, said Oracle Senior Vice President Kenneth Glueck in a letter posted Monday in docket 16-42. The proposal would replace multichannel video programming distributor gatekeepers with a “global hungry, market dominant, Google, largely outside FCC authority." Google is “the clear winner” from the proposal if it increases that company's access to consumer data while carriers have to abide by further regulations, Oracle said. The FCC shouldn’t require cross platform search only of pay-TV carriers, the software maker said. Google’s Android operating system ties developers into a proprietary application program interface and shouldn’t be designated a widely available platform, Oracle said. Google didn't comment.

Phone companies continue to shed broadband customers, while cable companies continue to add them, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Thursday. During Q3, the U.S.'s 14 largest cable and telco providers added 625,000 net additional subscribers, roughly the same as added in Q3 2015, LRG said. Cable companies added roughly 775,000 subscribers in Q3, about the same as the year-earlier quarter, it said. Telcos meanwhile lost about 150,000 subscribers, similar to the 145,000 lost in Q3 2015, LRG said, adding that they have had net broadband losses in five of the six most recent quarters. For the first three quarters of 2016, cable added about 2.44 million broadband subscribers, compared with 475,000 lost by telcos, the research firm said.

All top Charter Communications executives with the authority to propose or sign off on imposing of data caps or usage-based pricing are aware that the FCC's approval of Charter buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks includes the condition it not impose such pricing mechanisms on its fixed mass-market broadband service, the operator said in its first semi-annual data caps and usage-based pricing report as required as part of the FCC conditions. In that report, filed Wednesday in docket 16-197, Charter also said no proposals have been made to any of its executives or directors that the company use data caps or usage-based pricing in broadband offerings.

Pay-TV subscriber losses were up in Q3, when the 11 largest pay-TV players, covering about 95 percent of the market, lost roughly 255,000 net video subscribers, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Wednesday. That compares with a loss of 210,000 subscribers in Q3 2015. LRG said the top six cable companies lost roughly 90,000 subscribers in the most recent quarter, down from losing 170,000 in Q3 a year earlier. Direct broadcast satellite added 207,000 subscribers in the quarter when Dish Network's Sling TV gains are included, compared with a gain of 3,000 in Q3 2015, Leichtman said. It said DirecTV's 323,000 net adds in Q3 were the most in any third quarter since 2011. Telco providers lost roughly 375,000 subs in the quarter, compared with a loss of 45,000 in Q3 2015. The researcher said that over the past year, AT&T has shed about 1.3 million U-verse subscribers while adding 1.2 million DirecTV subscribers. Over the past year, those top pay-TV providers have lost roughly 755,000 subs, compared with a loss of 445,000 over the previous 12 months.

Ericsson signed an exclusive deal with 20th Century Fox Television Distribution for its sub-Saharan Africa subscription VOD service, Nuvu, giving it access to Fox-produced titles and an array of global film franchises, it said in a news release Wednesday.

When building their own a la carte video package, consumers most want ABC, CBS, NBC, Discovery Chanel, History and Fox, TiVo's Digitalsmiths reported Wednesday. For each of those channels, consumers are willing to pay roughly $1.50 a month, with the average price for their top-10 channels being $15.30 a month, it said. That raises the question of whether consumers face sticker shock when asked to pay, for example, the $5.99 per month charged by CBS for its All Access app, Digitalsmiths said. It said it looked at the skinny bundle offerings available now, and found none carries all the 20 most-desired channels. "Add up the cost of a skinny bundle, subscription video on demand service and a streaming device like Google Chromecast and the total is essentially back to the cost of a traditional pay-TV package," it said. "Will consumers catch on that skinny bundles aren't really skinny?" The TiVo unit said pay-TV providers could remain competitive by offering a la carte or skinny bundle packages that include channels unavailable in competitive offerings. The data came from a survey of 3,140 U.S. and Canadian participants.